Same with race car driving. Then again, in equestrian sports and nascar the horse and car are the "athlete".

I've competed in equestrian sports my whole life and I can tell you the rider is an athlete. You can't be out of shape and be a successful equestrian. It takes a lot of core strength, muscle coordination, and more cardio than it appears to need.

Sorry about bumping an old thread, but I found a good article, worth considering.

Two quotations:

"Shaquille O'Neal is a veritable giant, genetically unlike almost any
man we know, but we don't ask if he's human. Instead, we call him an
athletic freak. A superman. Michael Phelps' torso-to-leg proportions,
combined with his large paddle-like hands, make him a marine machine.
Yet we call it a gift, not a laughable genetic blunder. Jockeys with
27-inch waists and small shoulders might lack the physical stature
we've come to expect of men. Still, we don't call them womanly. We deem
them built to race horses."

"What if we assume Semenya is telling the truth? (As we should.) What
if she is just an 18-year-old South African woman? What if she's not a
cheater? What if she's not on the juice? What if she's just a
remarkable athlete?

There are so many things to consider
in these sensitive situations. The first is that we're not asking
someone to prove that his or her urine and blood are clean. We're
asking someone -- today, a South African teenager -- to justify what
we've been conditioned to consider male or masculine. We're asking her
for an alibi for her inexplicable athleticism."

This sounds like the writer is assuming (or pretending) that we live in some counterfactual world where athletes are asked if they do drugs, and believed when they say not, and there are no drug tests -- because, you know, we should believe them...

"Lack of hips"--she's got 'em, but they're narrow. Is it surprising that a world-class female runner might have narrower than normal hips? That's like being surprised that Michael Phelps has big hands. Or that Mike Tyson's got a thick neck.

Are you asking why people were surprised that one competitor in a field of women looked like a man?

I'd suppose they were surprised because (a) in other events, they saw a field of women, and they didn't see any that looked like men sneaking in, and (b) in that event, they thought it looked like a man had snuck in, or something.

But that's just me supposing; I can't tell you for sure what went through the head of other people, or why. People are strange and wondrous (to put the best spin onto it).

I call bullshit on this guy. He says there are 1 in 1,600 intersexed people born in the US, which "is more intersexed people than Jews" in America. Well, Jews make up roughly 1.7% of the US population, so his math is wrong.

I myself thought the hermaphrodite comment was pretty relevant. I'm not sure what I think. Do you have an opinion on whether hermaphrodites should compete as women? Or should they be forced to compete as men? Or should they be allowed to choose their gender category? (The last could easily be accomplished by allowing anyone to compete as whichever gender they like, which would remove the entire issue of stigmatic testing, I suppose.)

(The same question could naturally be asked about transsexuals, and transvestites, I guess, with perhaps varying answers, depending on which we're talking about and what your opinions are.)

Or there could be a bunch of new gender categories - heh, doesn't sound too likely....

Now the 100m finals, of the category "Women Born in Men's Bodies, Post-Surgery". The competitors are warming up and setting up their blocks...